Look Ahead in personal branding

I’m the type of person who likes to have an end goal in mind whenever I do anything. Sometimes, I catch myself doing things just for fun, but I can usually find a way to work it into my life based on some sort of commonality.

Yesterday, I led a discussion on Talent Talk Cafe about personal branding. It was the second of a series that will likely continue until I get a few points across. I had an outline of sorts to lead the discussion along. It looked like this:

Strategy: I happen to think this is the most important part. (all the other points should really be subheads if I was any good at outlines) Do you know who you want to be? How you want to be perceived? Transparency is a HUGE part of social media which is, in turn, a very powerful tool in building a personal brand. Having an end goal in mind is very important on the days when you are sure you could be a great travel writer or whatever. (You probably can and if that’s your goal work towards THAT.)

Groups: Okay, who are your groups? I say this because it sounds less cheesy than “target markets”. For many talent acquisition professionals it’s as simple as clients and candidates. But penetrate further into the space and you’ll find that vendors have their own target markets, consultants are chasing their own fish, bloggers are trying to reach a specific audience (if trying to monetize). Even if it is as easy as clients and candidates, you have to make sure you are WHERE they are. So really dig in and figure out who your “audience” is.

Schedule: The tricky part of navigating the kinda new waters of personal branding (as it relates to online stuff) is that your boss probably thinks its ridiculous. It’s okay, for years insurance agents and sales pros have known that going to netowrking events and creating a “story” or pitch is all part of the job. But it’s only PART of the job. SOcial media has a scary little habit of pulling you in. That’s why having a schedule that you can more or less stick to over a week’s time is so helpful. Make it a part of your overall strategy. You  (and your boss) will thank me for it. Go ahead and add face to face mixers and unpaid speaking engagements to this allotment, which I think should be between 5-10 hours. Don’t take this out of your company time, take it out of your time, unless you own the company or like this woman, your boss wants you to get out there and engage.

Feedback: I think a lot of people miss the boat on this one. Fortunately, there are lots of tools that are helping with the conversation part of relationship. Allowing clients, customers, and colleagues to critique you or praise you in public is huge. Another benefit to be perenially available is that many times, a problem rarely gets too big. At least in my world. Recent example of where a company could have used feedback to its advantage. Lesson? Take your licks, make it right, get better.

Portfolio: Again, this is becoming too easy NOT to do. Tools like LinkedIn, Google Profile and Visual CV (hat tip to Michael Marlatt for really pushing me to do one, and to Joel Cheesman for trying to get me to do one a while ago. . .still definitely going to do one) make the sometimes exhausting task of assembling all your professional scorecards in one place. If you have any collateral, put it there, or link to it from your blog, or use slideshare, scribd or box.net. Both Box.net and Slideshare can be imported directly into LinkedIn. Even FaceBook can be a place to load up videos, likewise flickr for pics.

Pictures: Speaking of pictures, all your pictures should be the same and look like you. For your personal brand, you should have a personal picture. If you are blogging, tweeting or otherwise acting on your company’s behalf, a logo is great, but people will not recognize you on the street, come up and talk to you at conferences or feel like they know you unless you use one consistent picture across your networks.

I am kinda tired, so let’s go through input, distributions and cross promotion after the big turkey day huh? I am thankful for ALL OF YOU!